President Trump released a social media post Tuesday citing an initial Census Bureau analysis of voter records, claiming it demonstrates that over 24,000 noncitizens voted illegally in the 2020 presidential election. According to Trump, the final count will increase substantially once the statistical agency completes examination of additional voter records.
The seven-page Census Bureau report, which draws on a 2020 commercial voter file and federal administrative records, has drawn criticism from data and election experts who question its methodology and conclusions. NPR reported that work on the analysis was not conducted by career Census Bureau civil servants, and included individuals affiliated with the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded by officials from Trump’s first administration. The Census Bureau, the think tank, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment, though AFPI posted about the analysis on social media, stating the think tank supports maximizing transparency in elections.
Election experts expressed significant reservations about the report’s reliability. David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, characterized the analysis as problematic, noting that Census data cannot reliably be matched to voter data. He also noted that the figures cited by Trump represent approximately 0.02 percent of the 128 million voter records examined. Michael Morse, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, cited concerns about lack of unique identifiers and outdated naturalization records, and noted the estimated rate of apparent noncitizen voting is both small in absolute terms and consistent with expected data-matching errors.
Former Census Bureau employees raised additional concerns about the report’s presentation and methodology. Misty Heggeness, a former bureau economist, noted the absence of an author attribution as unusual and suggested it raises questions about the rigor of internal review. Amy O’Hara, former chief of the bureau’s Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications, pointed to the lack of variance measures and bias discussion, and questioned whether apparent matches between voter files and citizenship records represented the same individuals or potential name matches. O’Hara also expressed surprise at the report’s claim that the Census Bureau is uniquely capable of publishing statistics on election fraud, stating that data anomalies do not necessarily indicate fraud.
The report’s release follows significant staffing departures at the Census Bureau and comes as the Trump administration signals plans for major changes to the 2030 census. O’Hara characterized the report as potentially damaging to the Census Bureau’s reputation as a nonpartisan statistical agency during a period when public participation in the upcoming decennial census will be critical.
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